the unconscious old gentleman a perfect fixture; to be taken at a
valuation, I suppose, part of his personal property being already
"brought to the hammer!" the clattering clamour of the wheel precluding
him from hearing the careful, but no less effectual taps. I certainly
enjoyed the trick, and longed to see the ridiculous issue; but he was so
intent upon his sport--so fixed that he did not discover the nature of
his real attachment while I remained.

Doubtless if he were of a quick and sudden temperament, a snatch of his
humour rent his broad cloth, and he returned home with a woful tail, and
slept not--for his nap was irreparably destroyed!

I hate all twaddle; but when I see an old fool, with rod and line,

"Sitting like patience on a monument,"

and selling the remnant of his life below cost price in the pursuit of
angling,--that "art of ingeniously tormenting,"--a feeling,

"More in sorrow than in anger,"

is excited at his profitless inhumanity.

Vainly do all the disciples of honest Izaak Walton discourse, in
eulogistic strains, of the pleasure of the sport. I can imagine neither
pleasure nor sport derivable from the infliction of pain upon the meanest
thing endowed with life.

This may be deemed Brahminical, but I doubt that man's humanity who can
indulge in the cruel recreation and murder while he smiles.